


Remain

by trace



Category: Death Note
Genre: Creepy, F/M, Ghost Sex, Grief/Mourning, Haunting, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 06:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trace/pseuds/trace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Misa Amane is haunted.</p><p>This story is set shortly after the end of Death Note.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remain

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for an anonymous kink meme. I don't remember specifically where or what the prompt was. I dug it out of the depths of my hard drive with a timestamp from January of 2009, so yeah.

Misa has an envelope filled with pieces of Light. A lock of hair, a tiny bit of white ash from the bone-picking table. A fingernail clipping. She scatters it in secret, high over the city so that he'll rain down on all the people and everyone will breathe him. This was Light, she thinks, opening the thin envelope, and she's staring down at the concrete so far below. It looks startlingly clear, like she could reach out and touch it. She huddles back from the ledge, clutching at the ground while her head spins.

When it feels safe, she crawls back to the edge and pours the envelope over the side, clenching her eyes shut so she won't have to watch Light blow away in the wind. She feels herself tilt and she's sure she's tipping off the building with the ashes, but when she opens her eyes she's still on solid ground.

She goes home, puts on her white nightgown that looks a little like a wedding dress, and swallows half a bottle of sleeping pills.

The sun is going down. The yellow light shines through the window onto her face and her eyes keep drifting open no matter how hard she tries to keep them closed. That's how she notices the shadow in the corner that's shaped like a person. She tries to close her eyes so it won't notice her, but her eyelids won't stay down. Every time they slide back up the shadow is closer.

It's so hard to make her arms move. Her head is swimming, but she gropes for her phone on the bedside table, pressing numbers through a fog. The shadow is at the foot of her bed. It's leaning forward, coming down toward her.

"Police," says a grainy voice near her ear. The phone, she remembers. "Hello? Police," the voice says again.

"Help me," Misa whispers. The shadow has eyes.

*****

She wakes up with a start, looking instantly to the foot of the bed, but there's nothing there.

It's not her room, she realizes. She's in a hospital.

She feels terrible. Her head pounds whenever she moves and her throat hurts almost as much. She presses the call button for the nurse. No one comes, so she presses it again.

It's night. There's darkness behind the edges of the blinds and the lights in her room are dimmed, casting every corner into shadow.

"Hello?" she calls, voice rasping through her dry throat. "I need a nurse."

In the movies people always know when they're being watched, she thinks, but maybe that's the kind of thing that isn't so easy in real life.

She hears the click of footsteps somewhere down the hall. She can't let herself relax until she sees the nurse, alive and real, with a firm voice that scares the shadows back behind the furniture.

*****

"Do you remember taking the pills?" the doctor asks carefully. She's gentler than the nurse.

"Yes." Misa is listless. It's sunny outside, so bright that her hospital room is like a hazy gold cave.

"Do you remember why you took them?"

"I wanted to sleep."

"Do you have trouble sleeping?"

"Lately..." She trails off. It takes so much effort to talk.

"Hmm. Do you remember how many you took?"

Misa's breath hitches a little. "I think I took too many."

"We had to pump your stomach." When Misa says nothing, the doctor asks pointedly, "Why did you call the police?"

"There was someone in my room."

"A stranger?"

Misa bites her lip. "I don't know. He stood over the bed. Like a ghost."

The doctor touches her arm so gently that she doesn't think to flinch until it's too late. "Your ghost may have saved your life."

"I don't think he meant to," she says.

*****

She leaves the hospital the next morning. The doctor presses a counselor's business card into her hand and says, "Give him a call." Misa smiles weakly.

She steps out onto the sidewalk and suddenly she knows what it feels like to be watched.

She walks a few blocks in a random direction, keeping in the sunlight, but the feeling follows her, building up like pressure on her back.

Finally she stops and closes her eyes, defeated. "Misa is very tired," she says softly. "She can't run away anymore."

A cold, cold hand slides up her arm. There's a shadow across her eyelids and the chill of breath across her face startles her into opening her eyes. There's no one there.

She raises a hand to her shoulder, rubbing the warmth back into her skin.

*****

She wakes up in the middle of the night. It's crouching on the end of her bed, a darker shape against darkness, and the eyes.

"Are you Death?" she whispers and her voice is so loud. She feels the blood draining from her face.

It's not Death. She can see from the silhouette that it's not. She almost laughs as she realizes that it looks a little like Ryuuzaki, but it's not really funny.

It puts something like a hand over her ankle and the chill seeps through the sheets. She pulls away violently, curling up in a ball with the sheets over her head, and it follows her up the mattress. It presses against her back, arm wrapping around her body. Even through the sheet she can feel the breath on the back of her neck.

When she wakes the next morning it's gone, but she's cold down to her bones.

*****

"Light," Misa says to his bones in the urn. "I..." She has to stop because there's nothing to say. Even if he were there, Light only had time for very important things.

He wouldn't have wanted her to cry, so she sits for a very long time, breathing shallowly under the weight of his memory.

That night she lies perfectly still as the ghost of Ryuuzaki climbs up the bed and presses himself on top of her. He brushes his fingers over her eyes, freezing her tears to her eyelashes. His own eyes are wide and empty. She tries not to look at them.

She lets him kiss her mouth with paper-dry lips.

"What do you want?" she whispers, voice strangled, but he chews at his thumb and doesn't answer.

*****

She goes back to work and when she comes home she wants to sleep. Falling onto the bed and waiting for Ryuuzaki. Her body has forgotten how to shiver so she wraps around him while he wraps around her. Lets him inside when he rubs against her, trying not to see his eyes. It's so cold.

It's strange to know that her body can feel pleasure without her, moving with him while she slips idly into the back of her own mind, wondering if she really needs to be here for anything if her body can manage on its own.

Ryuuzaki sits at the edge of the mattress, knees drawn up, and watches her while she sleeps.

*****

In mid-January she starts to put her jacket on and realizes there isn't a point, so she walks to the studio without it. "Miss Amane!" cries the girl at the reception desk. She must have paged everyone in the building because Misa is surrounded by people asking questions. It's so much warmer in the building that the air hurts her skin.

"Miss Amane!" yells the cameraman, shoving through the crowd. "Are you okay? You look frozen solid."

"I'm fine," she says.

"Where's your coat? Where's your limousine?"

"I'm fine. I'm cold, but I'm okay." Someone presses warm hands over her ears, which is nice. She lets herself enjoy the touch a little. Is this what it used to be like, to feel human in a crowd?

"I'm fine," she says again, but she lets them give her hot tea.

*****

Ryuuzaki slides onto the bed and his hand touches her arm. Misa shrugs it off irritably. "Stop it. You're freezing cold." He draws back, staring at her from the edge of the bed.

She glares back. His eyes are dark hollows. She doesn't know what she feels when she looks at him. Guilt she can't understand. She sighs. "You can stay if like, but don't touch me. I don't want to be cold tonight."

*****

She still sees him in the shadows, but he never reaches for her or comes to her bed. When he finally does, one more time, she bites her lip and stares back at him, at the hand hovering over her arm. "Misa asked if you were Death once. You never answered." There's still nothing. She huffs a little and says, "All right, you can touch me now."

"I know you're not Death. But I know. I'm going to die soon. I have a feeling." His hand runs up her arm, fingers skating up her neck to trace her jaw.

"It's so romantically tragic. A beautiful model cut down in her prime. I'm so young. That's what they'll print in the magazines." He presses his fingers to her eyes to freeze the hot tears, but she shakes her head. "I'm fine. I don't want to leave my life, but I'm leaving it in a happy place. That means something."

She settles back and he follows her down. She closes her eyes and lets him wrap around her, breathing in the chill of his breath.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was never beta'd. I might have liked to do a bit more editing, but I'm just not in that head space anymore. Forgetting about a story entirely for four years (?!) will do that to you.


End file.
